Abstract:

In the contemporary world of work, an individual seeking to pursue successful and meaningful career must adapt to variety of continuous changes and complex environments. Unpredictable events play an important role in everyone’s career. However traditional career counselling theories (person - profession fit theories) have failed to include the concept of change in career counselling, which is usually considered to be a service provided for the students by the higher education institutions. Nowadays possessing a set of professional competencies may no longer be sufficient for a successful career development. The theory of planned happenstance (Krumboltz, 2008) draws attention to these random events and encourages transforming them into opportunities for career development. Unpredictable events can turn into learning experience leading to positive or negative career consequences. Furthermore, from the perspective of the concept of planned happenstance, there is a set of skills which enables individuals to recognize, create and use unplanned events for creating career opportunities. These competencies are particularly important to students, since apart from developing their professional qualifications, they should also seek to acquire the strengths, which facilitate a successful adaptation to the academic environment, and even more, to prepare for their career management in this rapidly changing world. The planned happenstance skills help to survive and ensure success in the contemporary world of work, for which institutions of higher education are preparing the students. Utilization of planned happenstance skills may not only be beneficial in respect to career-related challenges but also to managing daily life issues of the students. Possession of such skills may contribute to successful coping with the demands and challenges related to new situations which, as a result, leads to an easier adaption to new professional environments. Planned happenstance skills should contribute to increased subjective well-being and better academic adjustment. The aim of the empirical research has been examination whether the skills of planned happenstance affect students’ subjective well-being and academic adjustment. The sample of the research was formed from students of the Lithuanian higher education institutions. The results of the research demonstrated that planned happenstance skills predict subjective well-being and academic adjustment of students. Therefore, the institutions of higher education, seeking for higher effectiveness, which is measured by the rates of their alumni employment and adaptation in the labor markets, should pay more attention to the development students’ planned happenstance skills.

Keywords:

Planned happenstance skills, students' well-being, students' academic adjustment.